The album is made up of excerpts from a gala benefit concert that was held both to honour Horne and to raise money for the Marilyn Horne Foundation, a charity dedicated to preserving the tradition of the classical vocal recital.[1]
Recording
The album was digitally recorded on 16 January 1994 in Carnegie Hall, New York City.[1]
Packaging
The cover of the album, designed under the art direction of Judy Teener, features a photograph of its artists taken by J. Henry Fair.[1]
Critical reception
Marilyn Horne photographed by Carl Van Vechten in 1961
Bernard Holland reviewed the concert at which the album was recorded in The New York Times on 18 January 1994. Although Marilyn Horne was in the descending phase of her career, he wrote, her decline was "graceful and dignified", and she still sang "extremely well". Although it was true that her pitch sometimes fell a few Hertz short of what it should have been, she remained an artist who was judicious, skilled in vocal gymnastics and a faithful servant of her poets. The concert's other veteran was very impressive too. Montserrat Caballé might be "giggling and mugging her way toward retirement", but her "glorious blast of soprano sound" was at least some compensation for the "senseless prattle" of her prefatory remarks. The ranks of middle-aged divas were represented by Helen Donath and Frederica von Stade. "Addled and overexcited introductions and unfortunate gyrations around the stage" meant that Donath's presence was "trying", but she brought exemplary diction to her eclectic choice of German items. Von Stade, singing Schubert's "Der Musensohn" and one of Schoenberg's cabaret numbers, projected "high spirits and dark wit" by dint of a similar expertise with words.
Renée Fleming photographed by David Shankbone in 2009
The concert's younger stars were willing to sacrifice textual clarity on the altar of sheer gorgeousness of sound, and both of them did indeed rise to marvellous heights of beauty. Ruth Ann Swenson "was in astonishing vocal health", with "lovely tone, agility and absolute security amid big complications". Renée Fleming was the day's outstanding performer in a "breathtaking" rendition of Benjamin Britten's "Let the florid music praise", with "music of many moods, movements and colours moving from one to the other with stately confidence and power". All the accompanists played well, Martin Katz and Warren Jones particularly.[2]
J. B. Steane reviewed the album in Gramophone in January 1995. Noting the coincidence that Montserrat Caballé had been born within a few days of the moment at which Marilyn Horne had been conceived, he rejoiced that the two sixty-year-olds could still "bring a glow with them", not least in Horne's performance of "At the river". Helen Donath, Samuel Ramey and Frederica von Stade represented the middle cadre of opera stars with "plenty of life and some style about them". Renée Fleming and Ruth Ann Swenson sang splendidly too. But Steane felt ambivalent about the album as a whole. It was obvious that the charity gala at which it had been recorded had been "warm-hearted". Those who had attended the concert would probably never forget it, and for them, the CD would be a treasurable memento. But the merciless scrutiny of the laser beam exposed flaws in the older singers' contributions that would not have been evident to someone sitting in Carnegie Hall and caught up in the spirit of the occasion. Listening to the album at home, one enjoyed the concert up to a point, but one's pleasure was "mainly [of] a theoretical kind" - "'You can tell they loved that', and so forth". "The disc may come down from the shelves from time to time."[3]
20 (3:19) Old American Songs, Set 2: "At the river" (Marilyn Horne, Martin Katz)
Patty Hill and Mildred J. Hill (attrib.), with a text by Preston Ware Orem and Mrs R. R. Forman (attrib.)
21 (1:24) "Happy birthday to you" (Olafur Bjarnason, Montserrat Caballé, Helen Donath, Renée Fleming, Samuel Ramey, Frederica von Stade, Ruth Ann Swenson, Martin Katz, Warren Jones)[1]
In 1994, RCA Victor Red Seal released the album on CD (catalogue number 09026 62547 2), with a 40-page booklet including the texts of all the songs in their original languages, translations into English, French and German and notes in English, French and German by Jane Scovell, co-author of Horne's autobiography.[1]
References
^ abcdefgMarilyn Horne: Divas in Song: A 60th Birthday Celebration, RCA Victor Red Seal CD 09026 62547 2, 1994
